As India braces for its long-delayed delimitation exercise in 2026, what’s at stake is not just political representation– but also balance of power between north and south, rural and urban, men and women and democracy and demography.

A significant challenge in the upcoming delimitation is to addressing the debates on the North-South seats allocation. A.P. CM N. Chandrababu Naidu calls for a proportionate increase in seats, after freezing the number of seats first, as seat allocation based on population size would ignore the efforts made by southern governments in controlling population, reducing their representation in the Lok Sabha compared to northern states. He recommends intra-state reallocation of seats based on population as an option, but not between states (Singh, 2025).

Tamil Nadu’s CM Stalin believes that delimitation unfairly shifts more power to North Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, which already dominate politics. Southern states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala controlled their populations well, and it would be unfair if they lost political power in delimitation. Stalin argues that just using total population is not fair, as many in North India are under 18 and cannot vote; counting only voters seems illogical, as the difference between states is smaller. Southern states have higher voter turnout, and cutting their seat count could be unjust and unfair. In fact, the current voting system (first-past-the-post (FPTP)) already gives more power to bigger parties, like BJP. So, delimitation solely on population criteria seems to increase unfairness rather than fix it (Steuwer, 2025).

Whereas if we look on the other side, Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) in Bihar supports population-based reallocation of seats and demands increased seats for northern states, without cutting the seats of southern states. They believe states like Bihar and UP are losing political representation, as the seats (including SC/STs) are allocated based on 1971 census data, not the current population (Chaurasia, 2025).

Home Minister Amit Shah has stated that the reallocation of seats will be done on a ‘pro-rata basis’—that is, proportionately—and that no state will lose seats. However, his statement does not clarify whether this proportionate increase will be based on the existing share of seats or on projected population figures (Rangarajan, 2025). If the current number of seats in the Lok Sabha (i.e., 543) remains unchanged and the redistribution is carried out proportionately, there would be huge gains for some states and loss for others, causing significant concern and distress among these states. But if the number of seats is increased to 848 based on the 2026 projections, no state would lose any seat. Instead, there would be a significant net gain for states like Uttar Pradesh (63 seats), Bihar (39), Rajasthan (25), and Madhya Pradesh (23). However, states like Karnataka and Punjab would see only marginal gains of 13 and 5 seats respectively, raising concerns about growing disparities and perceived loss of proportional representation for these states (Vaishnav and Hintson, 2019).